United Nations Development Programme

The MDG Acceleration Framework

The MDG Acceleration Framework (MAF) provides a systematic way for countries to develop their own action plan based on existing plans and processes to pursue their MDG priorities.

It also helps governments to focus on disparities and inequalities, two of the major causes of uneven progress, by particularly responding to the needs of the vulnerable.

There is now a great deal of evidence about both the obstacles to MDG progress and how to overcome them. This evidence reveals that there is a range of tried and tested policies which, adapted to national contexts, will ensure MDG progress, where there is the leadership, capacity, and funding to implement them. To accelerate MDG progress, as called for by the MDG Summit Outcome Document, this evidence must be put into practice in a concerted effort that takes us to 2015.

In response to this call, the United Nations Development Group has endorsed UNDP’s field-tested MAF which offers a systematic way to identify bottlenecks to those MDGs that are lagging behind in specific countries, as well as prioritized solutions to these bottlenecks. The MAF is expected to build upon existing country knowledge and experiences, as well as policy and planning processes, and to help the development of country-level partnerships, with mutual accountability of all partners, towards the efforts needed to reach the MDGs by 2015.

The MAF is characterized by 4 factors:

Responding to national/local political determination to tackle identified off-track MDGs

Drawing upon country experiences and ongoing processes to identify and prioritize bottlenecks interfering with the implementation of key MDG interventions

Using lessons learned to determine objective and feasible solutions for accelerating MDG progress

Creating a partnership with identified roles for all relevant stakeholders to jointly achieve MDG progress

Once an MDG target making slow progress is identified by a country, the MAF suggests four systematic steps:

(1) identification of the necessary interventions to achieve the MDG target;

(2) identification of bottlenecks that impede the effectiveness of key interventions on the ground;

(3) identification of high-impact and feasible solutions to prioritized bottlenecks; and

(4) formulation of an action plan, with identified roles for all development partners, that will help realize the solutions.

Following the demand from countries, UNDP, in collaboration with the UN System organizations, has been supporting the development of MDG accelerated Action Plans in more than 50 countries covering the 2010 – 2014 period. These include countries where MAF action plans are currently under development, as well as those where completed action plans are under implementation:

Forthcoming Report

The report presents evidence about how the MDG Acceleration Framework works; examples of how action plans are being implemented; what countries are emphasizing in their visions for development; and what we can do to support them in accelerating progress and sustaining results to 2015 and beyond.